Hack­ers steal data on 100,000 US tax­pay­ers

A group of hack­ers stole con­fi­den- Wash­ing­ton: tial data on more than 100,000 US tax­pay­ers over the past four months, the com­mis­sioner of the In­ter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, John Kosk­i­nen, re­ported. At a Tues­day press con­fer­ence, Kosk­i­nen said that the hack­ers ac­cessed tax re­turns con­tain­ing a large amount of per­sonal data via the IRS “Get Tran­script” ser­vice be­tween Fe­bru­ary and May. “Get Tran­script” is a way to down­load sev­eral years of tax forms when a tax­payer would like to ap­ply for a mort­gage or ed­u­ca­tional fi­nan­cial aid, for in­stance.